The Freed
by KoteSkirata
Summary: Sequel to Riven. The Avengers plus one are taking on the Freed, there's a new villain to deal with, and a lot of things are going to explode. I can't think of anything else to put here because I'm bad at summaries, so just read Riven and then get back here!
1. Chapter 1 - Day 1

**Hello, everyone - I'm back. To those who are new to my writing: Please, please read ****_Riven _****before you read this story! You don't have to, but believe me, it will make much more sense!**

**To all my returning fans: THANK YOU for waiting! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it! Things are going to happen very fast in this story, and I'm exploring new POVs, but for the most part, it's the same format as ****_Riven._**** I'm trying to hang on to the characters and the plot, but if I screw up, don't be afraid to call me on it. As always, leave me a review.**

**And a very special THANK YOU and large hug for my best friend, who reviews as Captain America. Thanks, Cap. I appreciate it.  
**

**Disclaimer: I own Riven Lange, ****_Riven_****, and ****_The Freed. _****The plots are mine, the Avengers are definitely ****_not._**

**Welcome back to the inside of my head. Hang on tight, this is gonna be a wild one.**

**K.S.**

The staccato sound of gunfire echoed throughout the room. An explosion flashed fiery death.

Riven Lange jumped off the couch and yelled, "_Finally! _Yes!"

Tony Stark gave her an amused look from where he reclined on the couch. "Good game," he said mildly.

Riven hopped around in a little circle, waving the game controller in her hand. "Yes! I knew I could beat you! It took forever, but I did it!"

Stark laughed. "Yeah, you did."

Thor was leaning on the back of the couch, a puzzled expression on his face. "I do not understand," he said. "We are supposed to be searching for the Freed. How will inducing avatars of energy to duel help us accomplish this task?"

Riven finally calmed down enough to set aside her controller and switch off the television, smiling at Thor. "It won't – but I needed a break. I've been in Tony's lab all week, trying to track Fury's communicator. It's been jammed somehow, with this really nasty code on it, so I'm pretty sure the Freed have him. If I can figure out the code, I can find Fury and the Freed at the same time. But I'm not running on the Tesseract's energy anymore. I needed to relax for a bit."

Thor nodded, the slight frown melting off his face. "I see. Recreation is necessary. But why do you believe the Freed have captured Fury?"

Stark shrugged, cutting off Riven's reply. "I've seen the code she's trying to break. I don't think anyone but the Freed could put together something quite that complex."

Riven stretched, tipping her head from side to side. The bullet wound below her ribs had almost healed, and it didn't bother her anymore unless she deliberately aggravated it. "Yeah, I've never seen anything quite like it. JARVIS has been a big help."

The grey-eyed scientist gave the millionaire and the demigod another smile, and added, "I'm going to get something to eat before I get back to work. Thor, want to come?"

Thor nodded gravely. The Asgardian was always hungry. Riven looped her arm through his and led him off toward the kitchens.

Steve Rogers entered the entertainment room only moments after Riven and Thor left it. He eyed Riven's game controller where it sat abandoned on the television console, and then turned to Stark. "You let her win, then?"

Stark grinned. "Oh, yeah. I figured she'd earned it, working in that lab all the time. She thinks she actually beat me, but that's all right. She came pretty close a couple of times - she's no good at strategy, but she runs the numbers so fast she gets the patterns figured out before I even know she's seen me."

Steve smiled. "That sounds like Riven." His gaze drifted back to Riven's game controller. Steve paused for a moment, then crossed the room and switched the television back on, scooping up the controller. "Up for another round?"

Stark's eyes lit up. "You're on, Cap."

Natasha Romanoff had just gotten out of the shower. Dressed in a white bathrobe, she exited the bathroom in search of clothes, and discovered Clint Barton sitting on her bed.

"Clint. What are you doing here?" Natasha crossed the room to the closet, rifling through the assorted outfits in search of something that she actually wanted to wear.

Hawkeye had his head tipped back, studying an air vent on the ceiling. Natasha would have bet anything she owned that he was trying to decide if he would fit in the duct. "I wanted to talk," the archer replied.

Natasha finally settled on a pair of slacks and a black shirt. "Why? You haven't been having any nightmares lately."

Hawkeye blinked, directing his attention to his partner. "How did you know that?"

The Black Widow turned to him, smiling in a way that made Hawkeye's bow hand twitchy. "I haven't heard you in the air ducts. And you and Riven have both been smiling a lot more than usual."

Hawkeye shrugged, returning his gaze to the air vent. "Well, you all heard our conversation in Acadia. We aren't exactly a secret."

Natasha laughed, retreating to the bathroom and half-closing the door so their conversation could continue while she dressed. "Only with us. You shouldn't tell Fury, once Riven finds him. I can't see him having any good thoughts about his precious prodigy getting romantic with one of SHIELD's best agents."

Hawkeye ignored her. "I've been thinking about the Freed. They're supposed to be pro-human, wanting to wipe out all the 'inhumans'."

"Yeah?" Natasha emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed and drying her red hair with a towel.  
Hawkeye continued, "But they also want to take out SHIELD, because supposedly we're evil, for controlling people's lives and using the 'inhumans' as a private army."

Natasha tossed the towel over her shoulder, where it landed neatly on the hook attached to the bathroom door. She moved across the room and sat next to her partner. "Clint, where are you going with this?"

Hawkeye looked at her, his gaze full of storms. "I don't know."

The Black Widow sighed. "I get it. You're worried about Riven."

He glanced away. "Think about it. Count out the times she's been near our team. New York – Riven got a piece of the Tesseract buried in her side, giving her life-threatening migraines and seizures for a year. Acadia – she took a sniper's shot for me, and was nearly killed on several occasions over a few days."

Hawkeye's hand gripped the bedpost, and Natasha's eyes followed the movement. "And now we know for sure that the Freed are hunting us. We've been able to hide here, but not even Stark Tower's bunker of a basement can keep the Freed out forever. We're going to have to face them on our terms, because we can't afford a repeat of last year. New York City barely survived Loki's army; we can't bring the Freed here. I'm afraid to let Riven out of my sight. She's in her lab right now, trying to find the Freed before they find us, but I don't want to think about what will happen if they get here first."

He closed his eyes, and Natasha gently laid her hand over his, prying his fingers free of the bedpost. "Clint. Look at me."

Hawkeye faced his partner, and Natasha said softly, "We'll be all right. Riven can take care of herself, and we'll all protect her."

He started to speak, and Natasha laid a finger over his lips. "I'm not done. Yes, I know she got shot in Acadia, but think about this – Riven saw the sniper. She chose to take that bullet for you. Do you really think Riven would have been shot if she didn't think it was the lesser of two evils?"

Hawkeye took a breath and let it out slowly. "No. You're right, Nat. You always are. Thanks."

She watched him stand up. "I'm going to go check on Riven again," Hawkeye said, and Natasha made a shooing motion at him as he left.

The Black Widow sighed. "My partner has turned into a soap opera," Natasha muttered. "I think I need to hit him."

Dr. Banner was in the lab when Riven returned. She had a cup of tea in one hand and a sandwich in the other – her grey eyes were vacant as she wandered in and deposited her snack on a convenient table.

The doctor glanced at Riven's food with a surprised and somewhat disapproving air. "Hello, Riven. Feeling better?"

"Much," Riven replied absently. "Tony let me win. I forgot to eat lunch again." She picked up the cup of tea, drank a little, and walked to a monitor, tapping the screen.

"This is wrong," Riven whispered, and opened a new window on the screen. Dr. Banner pulled up the same information on his screen, frowning at it.

"I don't see how this is wrong," he began, and Riven cut him off.

"I know, I don't see it either, but I know it's wrong. I can feel it. Something's off in the numbers." Riven scowled at the screen. "What aren't you telling me?" she hissed.

Dr. Banner raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

Riven glanced at him, apparently just now realizing he was in the room, despite having held a conversation with him. "Oh – not you, Bruce. The computer. I'm missing something here, and I know it has to do with the computer."

The doctor returned to his work; he'd mostly gotten used to Riven's antics, but she still surprised him occasionally. "This code is based on a series of random numbers that are constantly changing, yes?"

Riven blinked, her mouth full of sandwich. She settled for nodding enthusiastically until she could swallow. "Ulk. Sorry. Yes, that's right. I've got three different random number programs running, trying to find the right sequence, but I'm not getting anywhere – the numbers are always changing, so I don't know if it's not working because I'm three seconds too late, ten minutes too early, or if it's not the right combination at all."

"I hate random numbers," Dr. Banner muttered. Riven paused, her mug of tea not quite touching her lips.

"Random?" she blinked. "No. It's not random. It can't be." Riven set down the cup with a clank, barely avoiding splashing hot tea on her keyboard. She tapped the screen, rearranging a few numbers, and then began typing so fast her fingers knocked into each other.

"It's not random!" Riven punched the air, spun around, and hugged Dr. Banner. "Thank you! This is exactly like that video game that Tony and I were playing! I know how to break it now!"

The surprised doctor blinked down at Riven before carefully untangling himself from her enthusiasm. "I don't quite follow you."

"Well, no. It's absurd, really, just a minor technical glitch." Riven spun around again, grabbing hold of the counter to steady herself. "Whoa. I shouldn't spin, it makes me dizzy. Anyway – no computer is capable of creating a continuous cycle of truly random numbers. Eventually, it will show a pattern. Just like the video game; I sucked at guessing where Tony was waiting for me, but I could figure out when the random enemies were going to attack, because I recognized the pattern – the computer wasn't actually being random. It wasn't capable of being random."

Riven bounced up and down on her toes, her late lunch forgotten as she began to write a new computer program. "I understand now why the computers aren't making any progress. It's because the computers think it really is an endless random sequence, with no pattern. The computers will eventually repeat themselves, but our programs won't catch it, because they're computer programs, which will, by definition, see only a random sequence."

She paused, and then sank back onto her heels. "Which means we're in for a lot of hours of manual research. I'm writing a program to record every hit we get on the code breaker, and we're going to have to go through the list and try to find the pattern."

Dr. Banner added, "Which will be practically impossible, because we won't have a complete list of codes, only the ones we actually found."

Riven smiled at him, exhaustion plain in her eyes. She ran a hand through her spiky black hair, sighing a little. "Yeah. Basically."

The doctor said gently, "Riven, finish your lunch and go take a nap. You need it. Your video game might have recharged your mind, but your body needs rest. You went through a lot in Acadia, and your system is still adjusting to not having the Tesseract's power to draw on."

Riven nodded. "All right. Thanks, Bruce." She gathered her sandwich and mug of tea, and left the lab.

Dr. Banner watched her go, and then turned back to the computer screen, opening Riven's new program and reading through the list of seemingly random numbers.

_I see random, yes – but Riven says there's a pattern in here, somewhere. I'm going to find it._

**Not a bad first chapter, hmm? Yes? Be sure to tell me what you think.**

**K.S. **


	2. Chapter 2 - Day 2

**Hooray for chapter 2! Yes? Yes. I'm trying to put up a decent number of chapters at once, but I only have so many written, and I am a bit short on writing time these days. Fortunately, reviews inspire me. (Hint, hint!)**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Riven woke up with a gasp, shuddering at the things she'd seen in her sleep. She closed her eyes against the darkness, burying her head in Hawkeye's shoulder.

Riven sighed a little, breathing returning to normal as Hawkeye pulled her closer. "What's wrong?" he murmured, sleep heavy in his voice.

She let the sound of Hawkeye's heartbeat soothe her as she replied, "Just a nightmare. The Freed."

Hawkeye made a soft noise in the back of his throat, and stroked Riven's wild hair. "You too?"

Riven picked her head up to squint at him. They'd taken to sharing a room, because it stopped the nightmares – at least until now. Riven said quietly, "What does that mean? I thought you weren't having nightmares anymore."

"I'm not. I think about the Freed when I'm awake."

Riven sighed, and laid her head against Hawkeye's chest. "Yeah. Me too."

They were quiet for a moment, and then Hawkeye said, "It helps to talk about it."

She smiled. "And how would the master of silence know that?"

Hawkeye ruffled Riven's hair. "Nat told me. She used to have pretty bad nightmares."

"Ah." Riven closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of their breathing. "Pretty simple nightmare, really. The Freed found us. I watched. It was bad."

"It didn't happen."

"I know." Riven wrapped an arm around Hawkeye's neck and snuggled in close. "I won't let it happen. I'll find them. I will."

"In the morning," Hawkeye said firmly.

"Yeah . . ." Riven was already asleep.

Riven wandered into the lab around eight in the morning. Dr. Banner glanced up at her, and said, "Good morning, Riven. You have powdered sugar on your nose."

"Huh?" Riven crossed dreamy grey eyes, blinked, and wiped the sugar off the tip of her nose. "Thanks. I guess that's from breakfast."

Riven glanced at Dr. Banner, and frowned. "Hang on – have you been in here all night?"

He didn't meet her gaze, staring determinedly at a computer screen. "I can't figure out the pattern. Every time I think I have it, your program adds a new sequence and it's wrong again."

Riven crossed the lab and poked the doctor in the arm. "Hey. Bruce. You're cheating. You can't tell me to get some sleep, and then stay up all night. That's not how it works. Now go to bed! I can do this part."

Dr. Banner sighed, turning his head toward Riven. "Yes, I think you can probably do it better than I can. All right. I'll see you later."

Riven shooed him out of the lab, and then pulled a chair close to the monitor, squinting at the numbers. "Wow. Ok, this is a lot more than I had to work with last night. I can do this. I will find the Freed."

Riven sat down in her chair, putting her feet up on the counter and tipping the chair back. She managed to balance in that position for a moment, and then had to grab the counter to keep from tipping over backwards.

"Ok, I think I'll leave that to Hawk," Riven muttered, planting her feet firmly on the ground once more. "He has a lot better balance than I do." Riven reached out and tapped the screen, rearranging a few numbers.

"All right. Time to crack the code."

Steve was sparring with Natasha when the gym door banged open and Riven shot into the room as though fired from a gun.

"I got it!" Riven yelled.

Natasha raised her eyebrows, and backed away from Steve. Hand-to-hand combat was all well and good, until you weren't paying attention when your partner decided to attack you.

"What did you find?" Steve asked, not taking his eyes off Natasha's hands.

Riven paused, staring at the two of them incredulously. "Oh – nothing much. I just broke the encryption key, so I can locate the Freed. That's all."

Steve blinked, and turned to face Riven. "You can find them?" Natasha took a deep breath, refocusing herself, and began to strip the protective gloves off her hands.

"Yeah." Riven bounced up and down on her toes, impatience radiating from her like light from a lamp. "Hurry up!"

Steve pulled off his gloves and followed a calm Natasha and a hyper Riven back through the halls to Stark's lab. Steve called the others on the way.

"Heads up, everybody. Riven broke the code. Meet us at the lab."

By the time Riven had skidded into Stark's lab and pulled up the relevant information, the others were waiting. Hawkeye caught Riven when her feet went out from under her on the slick floor. Thor was examining a keyboard with interest, and Stark was talking quietly with Dr. Banner, who appeared to still be asleep.

Riven gave Hawkeye a grateful smile and began typing rapidly. "Ok, guys. Bruce and I have been working on this all week, and we finally cracked it. I'll spare you the details –"

"Thank you," Thor said earnestly.

Riven grinned as she continued. "But suffice to say it was rather tricky. So. Once I run the code into the computer, it'll feed me coordinates for Fury's communicator, and we'll know where he and the Freed are."

The spiky-haired scientist hit the space bar on her keyboard, and paused. "Ok. We're good." Riven leaned forward to see the screen, and her eyebrows rose.

"You've got to be kidding me," Riven said in disbelief.

Stark coughed. "Ahem – we're waiting?"

"Right, sorry." Riven had the good grace to look embarrassed, and slung the flashing coordinates onto a central screen. The Avengers gathered around the screen.

Riven said it for them. "Los Angeles. It defies imagination."

**Bwa-ha-ha! For no particular reason, I just felt like cackling evilly right there. Ok, you know the drill. Read and review, because the more you talk to me, the more I write. You inspire me.**

**K.S.**


	3. Chapter 3 - Day 3

**The posting streak continues! Well, sort of. I'm supposed to be writing a decade summary right now, so I'm having to be rather sneaky about this. I hate decade summaries.**

**So I'm doing this instead.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed. _****Sadly, the Avengers do not belong to me. ;(**

**K.S.**

It was, no doubt, a really bad idea. Unfortunately, it was their only idea, and the only option that they had.

The Avengers were going after the Freed. The Avengers were going to attack the Freed where the Freed lived, in an underground base in California.

And they weren't taking Riven.

She was furious. She was also sulking. Riven was supposed to be running surveillance and feeding the Avengers information – in an hour or so, when they actually got to the Freed's base.

But she wasn't in the lab. She wasn't in the operations room. She wasn't anywhere anyone who knew her would have looked for her.

Riven was doing what she privately thought of as a Hawk. She was on the roof, alone with a blanket and a book.

Riven really, really hated the book in her hand. It had given her nightmares as a child. It reminded her of all the bad things in the world. She hated it.

As soon as Riven knew she wouldn't be able to talk the Avengers into letting her come, she'd found a bookstore and bought herself a copy of an old mystery story called _Crooked House._ Riven had a history with that accursed book, and so did her Hawk.

He'd told her once that he read it when he couldn't sleep. Riven didn't have trouble sleeping anymore, but right now, she couldn't seem to think.

Riven had her back to the communications array on the absolute top of Stark Tower. She was wrapped up in the thickest blanket she'd been able to find, and Riven was staring out at New York City, ignoring the book in her hand.

She hated New York. No, not really. She hated the world – no, she didn't. She hated – hated –

_Not Hawk. You could never hate Hawk. You're just angry._

Riven closed her eyes, feeling the cold wind whipping her black hair around her face. It was late afternoon. The Avengers were going in after the Freed just before sunset. Riven should be in the ops room, running numbers and calculating and trying to figure out –

But she'd already done that. All of it. There was nothing more she could do.

Riven screamed at the top of her lungs and flung the book she hated off the top of Stark Tower.

She regretted it immediately. Riven had no idea who might get hurt because she'd thrown a stupid book off the top of a skyscraper. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, leaning her head down and pressing her face into her wrists. It made her eyes hurt. Riven didn't care.

_Hawk. I wish you'd let me come. I know I would have been a liability. I know I'm actually useful here. I know, I know, believe me, I know. I lived through Acadia. I remember._

_ But I wish you'd let me come._

_ I don't want you to get hurt._

_ I don't think I could live through you getting hurt._

_Three days ago_

Nicole Ciarra was not pleased with her personal assistant.

"Jacob, I believe I told you to bring me _all _the files we have on anyone the Avengers have interacted with over the past month?"

Jacob Brown was a young man with a harassed expression. "Yes, ma'am, you did. I was under the impression that I had done so."

Nicole flicked through the papers in her hand. "Hardly. Are you aware that our distinguished guest introduced the Avengers to a young lady named Riven Lange?"

Jacob glanced down at the tablet in his hand. "Yes, ma'am."

Nicole slammed her handful of paperwork onto her desk. "Then _why _do I not have a file on Riven Lange?"

The young man took a step backward. "I – I don't know, ma'am. I will fix it right away."

"See that you do. Dismissed." Nicole sank down into her custom-built desk chair, gazing at her computer screen. She muttered, "How am I to save the world while surrounded by such hopeless incompetence?"

Nicole flicked a strand of wavy blonde hair over her shoulder, and pulled up a new window on her computer. She frowned, and picked up a phone that lay on her desk. "Riley. Has the seventh battalion reported in yet?"

The voice in the phone came back crystal clear – Nicole Ciarra would suffer only the very best technology. "No, ma'am. I will alert you as soon as I have word."

The green-eyed woman sighed, placing the phone on the polished surface of the hardwood desk. Nicole did not frown – frowning encouraged frown lines, and she did not approve of frown lines. She leveled a disapproving gaze at her computer.

"The seventh battalion was to destroy the Avengers," Nicole mused. "I dislike their lack of response."

Nicole stood, calling in a clear voice, "Jacob!"

The teak door to her office swung open, and Jacob entered, his eyes frantic. "Yes, ma'am?"

_Spare me the hysterics,_ Nicole thought scathingly. "Jacob, I will be visiting our distinguished guest. Tell Donovan that I request his presence."

"Yes, ma'am." The bespectacled young man held the door open for his employer as she glided out. Watching her go, Jacob Brown caught himself in a thought that he prayed he never voiced aloud –

_Nicole Ciarra is a snake disguised as a woman. No wonder they call her the Taipan._

Jacob shook his head, hard, to clear it of such unwise thoughts, and succeeded only in flinging his glasses across the room. Wincing at the clatter of glass and metal on rare and expensive wood, Jacob hurried to reclaim his much-needed spectacles.

_I wouldn't want to be Nick Fury right now._

__**Short chapter, I know, but this is where I must leave you for now. For now. I'll be back later. I actually do have to write my decade summary, or my teacher will kill me, which would not be conducive to my writing skills.**

**Leave me a review and I will write faster!**

**K.S.**


	4. Chapter 4 - Day 3

**Good morning, everyone! And happy Halloween! Here's the next chapter. . . **

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**K.S.**

"All right, you're right on top of what I think is the hangar bay. You should be able to smash right in."

"Here? Really? It looks like a bunch of dirt to me," Stark replied.

Riven sighed, enlarging a scanned blueprint on her screen. "Well, yeah, that's the whole point. It's a _secret _base, Iron Man; they're not going to have a welcome mat saying _Enter Evil Stronghold Here_."

Captain America's voice came back with, "And once we're in the hanger, then what?"

Riven spun her chair around, pulling a screen closer. "Uh . . . right. Detention level is two floors down, I _think_, they've got it screened pretty well against detection. Offices are on the floor in-between, so odds are good that whoever is in charge will be there. This is fairly impressive – I mean, they've got corporate holding practically everywhere. Finances are hardly a problem for the Freed. I really want to know who's running this show."

The Black Widow's amusement was obvious in her tone. "Focus, Riven. Destruction and rescue first, psycho-analysis later."

Riven's nose turned pink, and she was glad the Avengers couldn't see her. "Sorry. Anyway, generators are the farthest down. Easiest way to take it all out would be to blow the generators, but you'll have to direct it southeast somehow, or you'll blow up a suburb and a half."

The Captain replied, "Got it, Oracle, thanks. We'll call you if we need anything."

Riven blinked, grey eyes going blank. _Oracle? _"Hang on a second – who thought up my code name?" she demanded.

Hawkeye's voice came back, unreadable and focused. "I did."

"Oh. Thanks. Ok. I'll be here if you need anything."

Riven stared at the computer in front of her, mind empty except for a single thought.

_Oracle?_

Slowly, she smiled. Riven's entire face lit up, and she leaned back in her chair, sipping her tea.

_Oracle. I like it._

Nicole Ciarra looked down at the tablet in her hand, a venomous smile darkening her face. "This is perfect," she declared. "Aside from the loss of Battalion Seven, everything is working out in accordance to my second plan. The Avengers are above us now, preparing to enter from above the hanger bay."

Jacob blanched. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he ventured, "But I don't see how this is a good thing."

Nicole sighed in irritation, tapping custom-made silver shoe against the floor. "Jacob, you never see, do you?" she said angrily, then held up a hand to ward off his response. "No, don't answer that. It's horrifically apparent."

The blonde woman smiled sweetly, sending chills up Jacob's spine. "You see, _dear _boy, when the Avengers blast their way in here, they will discover that we have laid them a most exquisite trap." She closed her sparkling green eyes, savoring the thought. "I do so love a perfectly executed scheme," Nicole sighed.

Her eyes snapped open, and she thrust the tablet at Jacob. "Take this. I must address my soldiers, to re-enforce their determination before we rid the world of the so-called Avengers."

Nicole glided out of her office, stiletto heels making not a sound as she made her way toward the stairs. Despite her love of convenience, Nicole positively prohibited any elevators below ground. There was such a thing as asking for disaster, and it helped keep everyone in fighting trim if they had to climb stairs.

The shapely blonde made her way to a balcony overlooking what she had named the parade ground. Nicole's Freed were assembled already, awaiting her speech.

Nicole raised a hand to her soldiers and smiled radiantly, inducing the Freed below to shout their salute. Nicole waved to them, basking in the adulation for several moments before closing her hand to signal for silence.

Nicole Ciarra said clearly, "Soldiers of Freedom! Our greatest enemies are at hand, soon to be upon us. And we will vanquish them! For we are the Freed. We see through the lies of SHIELD. They seek to manipulate us. Earth is the home of the humans – _our home._ It is our right to defend it. SHIELD has formed a private army of inhumans, creatures who do not belong on Earth. We will destroy them, and reclaim our home. For we are all that stands between our Earth and SHIELD's inevitable attempt to conquer our home."

Nicole raised delicately manicured fist into the air, lifting her voice to an airy shout. "We will destroy SHIELD and all its inhuman lackeys! We will reclaim our Earth! We will save our world from tyrannical domination, and we will preserve the rights of our fellow humans – we will give our home world back to our people! _The Earth is ours!_"

Nicole savored the roar of her army below her, closing her eyes to breathe in their fury. After a few moments, she directed her poisonous green gaze to her soldiers.

"The time is now!" she shouted. "The Avengers are entering our hangar as I speak – go forth in freedom, and destroy our oppressors!"

Nicole saluted them with one hand, watching her army pour out the doors in a well-armed and well-organized rush. She took a deep breath of the cool, filtered air, and turned on her expensive heels to return to her office.

"Time to orchestrate the Avenger's last moments," Nicole breathed, and a wicked light began to burn in her emerald eyes.

**Ah, don't we all just love our villains. So, review! I know I have people out there who were waiting for this story, but it seems they haven't found it yet. Oh well.**

**Tell me what you think!**

**K.S.**


	5. Chapter 5 - Day 3

**Hello everyone! After my awesome costume last night, I'm feeling rather beat this morning. But nothing will keep me from writing! Except, perhaps, chemistry. . . **

**Ahem.**

**I forgot to remind you guys at the beginning, so I think I'll tell you now: In case you haven't already noticed, I wreaked havoc on the canon. It was fun. If you don't like it, don't read it.**

**If you do like it, leave me a review!**

**Disclaimer: All I own are Riven, ****_Riven_****, and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Riven was typing so fast the computer couldn't keep up with her. She paused for a moment, then turned to a different monitor and tapped the screen, enlarging a blueprint.

_Thank goodness for my hacking abilities, or my friends would be fighting blind down there._

"Thor, you have a dozen Freed coming in ahead you," Riven said quickly. "Cap, you and the Hulk should be clear in a minute, but watch out for the guys behind you."

She didn't expect an answer, and she didn't receive one. Riven knew the Avengers were entirely too busy to chat at the moment – her role as spotter and hacker was to tell the Avengers where to be and who was trying to kill them, not to hold political debates. Riven liked her job, and she really liked her codename.

_Oracle. I love it. I wonder how Hawk came up with it._

Riven flicked a blueprint out of the way, squinting at the next level down. "Black Widow, you and Hawk are about to have problems – the access tube on your right is rigged to blow in –" Riven checked her signal reading for the electronic timer, and finished, "About three minutes."

Riven spun her chair around, grabbing onto a counter to steady herself. She was glad the ops room had office chairs instead of straight-leg chairs like the ones in the lab. Riven started typing again. Something was bothering her, and she couldn't put a finger on it, but she knew it had to do with the generators.

In between calling spots for the Avengers, Riven was trying to hack into the specs on the generators. She was worried about the power source the generators were using, because they weren't using the LA power mainframe for electricity, and Riven knew a generator had to have a starter power source, no matter how much energy they could produce.

Riven frowned at the screen, spinning back around as a monitor beeped. Her eyebrows raised, and Riven said urgently, "Iron Man, I'm reading another plasma cannon on your left. You know the drill; laser to the housing should blow it clean."

"My pleasure, Oracle." Riven grinned. Tony Stark was _never _too busy to chat.

She scanned the specs for the plasma cannon and glared at the screen. It was one of _her _designs, a stolen one. Riven resumed typing, furious.

_How dare they take my plans and use them to hurt my friends?_

Nicole Ciarra laughed in delight. "Oh, this is perfect!" she purred. "You see, Jacob? Once the Avengers feel they have defeated a significant portion of my army, they will destroy the generators – eradicating themselves, Fury, and half the state of California. There will be no chance of escape."

Jacob glanced up from his tablet, one hazel eye twitching nervously behind his glasses. He could hear the sounds of fighting even from Nicole's office – the Hulk roaring, various things exploding, and gunfire. "I'm sorry, ma'am," Jacob said anxiously, "But won't that eradicate us, as well?"

Nicole laughed again, sending chills down Jacob's spine. "_Dear _Jacob," Nicole smiled her poisonous smile at him, "We have a plane to catch."

Nicole sashayed out of her office, flicking her elegant fingers at him. "Come along. We have a long way to go, and I have an appointment to keep with a certain Riven Lange."

Jacob stared at her, open-mouthed, and hastily grabbed up her tablet. He scrambled after the woman known as the Taipan, holding on to his glasses as the underground fortress shook.

"Change of plans, _do not blow the generators!_" Riven yelled, swatting at her computer screens. "_Do not touch the generators!"_

_ I knew they had a Tesseract shard, the Freed had to have one in order to crack my firewall and steal my tech. But this is insane!_

"What's going on, Oracle?" Captain America didn't sound happy, and Riven didn't blame him.

"Tesseract shards, Cap. _Three _of them. That's what they're using to generate power. If you take out those generators, you take out half the state of California, plus yourselves and Fury. Speaking of whom, Hawk, Black Widow, you need to be a corridor to the left and three doors back."

Thor's voice said in fury, "The Freed are using multiple Tesseract shards to power their attacks on SHIELD?"

Riven ran a hand through her hair, biting her lip as she stared at a computer screen. "Yeah, that's what I just said, Thor. Don't touch the generators until we've got the area under control, or you're likely to blow yourselves sky-high."

Riven winced as the sound of the Hulk's roar was broadcast into her ear. _Ow. Really need to put a volume filter on Hulk roars._

Iron Man translated, "Then what exactly are we supposed to do to get rid of these guys? There are too many for us to take care of all at once, and we're running out of –" he was interrupted by the sound of gunfire, and came back with, "_Shit! _Running out of _ideas, _here, Oracle!"

Riven stared at her flashing computer screens, panic building in her mind. "I – I don't know! I don't know what to do." A blinking emblem caught her eye, and she said hastily, "Cap, Hulk, you have a jet trying to launch out of the hangar."

The Hulk roared again, making Riven cringe, and she began typing, trying to come up with a backup plan. _First rule of planning an Avengers operation: Always have a plan B._

"Ok, I think I have something. Thor, you're right next to the office with all the power feeds pointing in. Um – that means it's the boss's office. See if anyone's in there."

There was relative silence for a moment, and then the demigod answered, "No one. Only technology."

_Crap. So much for that idea. _"All right, guys, I've only got one option here, and you're not going to like it." _Technically, it's not the only thing they could do, but leading the Freed into a running battle on the outskirts of Los Angeles is definitely not an option._

Riven sighed softly, and said, "The only thing I can think of it to lock yourselves in the generator room for the time being. It'll keep the Freed out because they won't want to risk blowing the doors for fear of blowing the generators, and it'll give me time to think of something else."

There was short pause, punctuated by something exploding, and then Captain America said heavily, "All right. We're taking a beating out here, so the generator room is a viable option. We can use the time to work out a plan. You have your orders, everyone. Hold the door until we're all inside."

Hawkeye spoke for the first time in Riven's recent memory, making her jump. "We have Fury, but he's in really bad shape. We'll meet you down there. Iron Man, try not to shoot us."

"Your confidence inspires me," Iron Man retorted, and Riven heard a sound like metal tearing. She winced, and pushed her chair back, closing her eyes for a moment.

_All right, Riv. You called time out. Now come up with a game plan._

__**Cliff-hanger! Ahhh! Sorry, that was just where I decided to end that chapter. Now, I'd better go get my school done, or chapter 6 could be a while. *crosses fingers***

**Let me know what you think!**

**K.S.**


	6. Chapter 6 - Day 3

**Hey, everyone. Today I am extremely sore because I got up at 5 in the morning to play volleyball, and my entire right side is bruised from diving for shanked passes.**

**If that made no sense, don't worry about it.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Nicole looked out the window of the jet at the buildings below, and smiled.

Jacob really wished she hadn't smiled. He hated it when the Taipan smiled.

The jet was built with technology that the Freed had stolen from SHIELD's new genius, and somehow it had taken Nicole and Jacob from one side of the country to the other in barely an hour. Jacob preferred more conventional methods of transport, but he was not about to argue with Nicole Ciarra.

Not for the first time, Jacob wondered exactly how he had gotten into this position.

Nicole stretched slowly, tipping her blonde head from side to side. Her vicious green eyes focused on her assistant, and her smile widened. "We will be landing shortly, Jacob," Nicole said softly. "And I will finally meet this Riven Lange who has devoted so much work to SHIELD. I simply cannot wait."

Jacob nodded politely, and was silently, profusely glad that he was not Riven Lange.

Riven Lange, as it happened, was sitting on the floor of the Stark Tower operations room, with her arms wrapped around her knees and her eyes closed. She was thinking.

She wasn't getting anywhere.

Riven had a lot of pressure on her, and it was only her first time running an operation that involved actual people, and not simulations. The Avengers were waiting for Riven to come up with a plan. The Freed were waiting to pounce on the Avengers as soon as they left the generator room.

Riven rubbed her temples and wondered if she was going out of her mind. She couldn't come up with anything. She was going nuts.

Riven's communicator chimed, indicating a change in current channel, and Hawkeye's voice said softly, "Oracle. Are you all right?"

She sighed. "Yeah. I'm fine. But I just can't think of anything."

He replied calmly, "You will. You always do."

Riven tipped her head back. "But I have a fairly serious time limit here, Hawk. If I don't come up with something soon, you'll all be stranded there until morning. And by then the Freed will have regrouped. I have to think of something _quickly._"

"Don't worry about it," Hawkeye told her. "Stop stressing. Go make yourself some tea. You'll be fine."

Riven smiled sadly. "Hawk, it's so _creepy _here. Stark Tower doesn't feel right when it's just me. It's too big, and too empty."

"I know. We'll be back soon. Go eat something. The ideas will come."

Riven said softly, "Thanks, Hawk. I'll talk to you soon," and switched back to the _Avengers plus Riven_ channel. She sighed, and got up, stretching tired limbs. Trying to keep her friends from getting killed was exhausting.

She wandered out of the ops room in search of the kitchen. And because of a cup of tea, Riven Lange did not see the warning on a computer screen telling her that a jet was landing on the roof of Stark Tower, many floors above her basement sanctuary.

Nicole glanced around her with interest. "Remarkable," she said, "I've always believed the reports of the marvels of Stark Tower to be exaggerations, but the Avengers and their Oracle were able to hide from us in the basement? I find it incredible."

Jacob was not as fascinated. He eyed the edge of the roof uneasily, inching closer to his employer. "Ma'am?" Jacob ventured. "Perhaps we should be going to the basement?"

Nicole cast him a scathing look. "Don't," she warned, "Be obtuse. _Of course _we are going to the basement!" The blond woman glided gracefully toward the stairwell, still talking. "And before you ask, dear predictable Jacob, no, we are not taking the elevator. I should think it obvious that the fabled Riven Lange would be intelligent enough to track elevator activity. And don't sigh."

Jacob choked back the sigh that he had been about to release, and hurried after the Taipan.

Riven was in the kitchen, carefully wringing the moisture out of a teabag, when JARVIS said politely, "Excuse me, Miss Lange, but I believe there are intruders in the stairwell."

She froze for a moment, suddenly cold. _Intruders? _Fear filled Riven's mind, and she took a deep breath, blinking hard. "Uh . . . how many? Which level?"

"Two, Miss Lange. They are three levels above this one, and descending rapidly."

Riven let the teabag slip out of her hand and splash back into the cup, splattering tea across the counter. "What? How did they get in? And why didn't you tell me sooner?"

JARVIS replied blandly, "I apologize, Miss Lange, but my defense systems have been incapacitated by foreign programming. I only recently restored my ability to speak to you."

"Uh-huh." Riven bit her lip, trying to ignore her shaking hands. Her mind was telling her to run, to hide. _I can't do this. I'm not prepared for this, I don't know how to be Oracle, or I would have seen this coming! What do I do now? I can't just hide, because that leave the Avengers stranded in the Freed's base. I have to get back to them. _

_ I have to survive the next few minutes!_

Riven fought to keep her breathing even as she asked JARVIS, "What do they look like?"

"One woman, one young man. The woman is armed, the man is not."

Riven nodded, mind racing. "That makes things a bit better. Ok . . . I have to take care of this. They have to be Freed, or they couldn't have gotten in, much less hacked you, JARVIS. I'm guessing the woman is in charge, because she's the one with the weapon. Ok. Ok. I can do this."

Riven closed her eyes for a minute, took a deep breath, and silently panicked.

_What am I supposed to do now?_

She said quietly, "Command, Avengers plus Riven. Guys? I have a problem. There are people here, they killed JARVIS's security systems, and they're probably after me. I need a little time to handle this. Are you ok for the moment?"

Captain America replied, "We're good. Not terribly comfortable, but the Freed quit shooting, so I guess they know they could blow themselves up if they damage the generators."

Hawkeye said quietly, "Riven? Be careful."

Riven almost missed his words because of Iron Man's indignant, "They hacked JARVIS? How?"

She smiled a little, and said, "Don't worry about me. Just don't get blown up. I'll talk to you again after I get rid of these people." Riven was moving as she spoke, darting across the hall and down the second stairwell, back to the ops room.

Riven sealed the doors behind her, and then shut off the electronic sensor. _If they want to get to me, I'm going to make it as hard as possible._ She then shut off every non-essential program running, and powered down as many computers as she could. Riven paused for a moment as a highly unpleasant thought occurred to her –

_I have no weapon. I wouldn't know how to use one anyway. I am almost completely defenseless._

_ Shit._

__**Well, I've left dear Riven in quite a predicament, have I not? Cliff-hangers seem to stick to me, no matter what I try to do about it. It's easier to remember what's supposed to happen next that way.**

**Reviews are wonderful, like brown paper packages tied up with strings. (Cap, that was for you)**

**K.S.**


	7. Chapter 7 - Day 3

**Guys, I screwed up. I posted the same chapter twice, and I apologize profusely. Thank you to the reviewer who pointed this out, and I think I have now fixed the issue. I apologize again. **

**And for those who don't know: a taipan a highly poisonous snake that can be found in Australia.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**K.S.**

Nicole Ciarra did not expect to have a cup of boiling tea spilled on her head the moment she managed to reboot the motion sensors, and then hack open the doors to the Oracle's operations room.

But then, who could have predicted that?

The Taipan was not amused. Jacob stood behind her with his mouth open, eyes wide. _Wow. Riven Lange is in for it now._

_ I admire her daring._

Nicole stood momentarily still, taking in the blistering hot liquid dripping down her silk blazer. For a long heartbeat, nothing moved. Then the Taipan let out a long, hissing son, and Riven Lange stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the room.

With her white coat and spiky black hair, Riven looked like a mad scientist from a nightmare. At least, in Jacob's opinion.

"The Taipan, I presume?" Riven asked.

Nicole smiled at her, cold and angry. "Quite. Are you the Oracle I've heard so much about?"

"Quite. And you're going to wish you'd never heard of me." Riven's answering smile gave Jacob chills. He took a small step backwards, even as Nicole took a step forward.

"Please, spare me the threats," Nicole laughed. "They bore me. Let's get down to business. You need to die. And I'm here to kill you."

Riven blinked. _And how exactly is that not a threat?_

She had used her time wisely, scrambling to get things done before the blonde woman and the young man with the glasses reached the operations room. Some last minute research had provided Riven with the information she needed to bluff, seeming to be in complete control.

Unfortunately, her little cup of tea booby trap had killed half the lights in the ops room, and Riven couldn't see much. She crossed her fingers and hoped for the best, trying and failing to ignore her racing heartbeat. "I'm afraid that would cause a few problems for you," she said, and was pleased that her voice sounded perfectly calm.

_Probably just shock and denial ganging up on my vocal chords. It hasn't sunk in yet that the Taipan is here to kill me. Don't think about that!_

_ If I can pull this off, my reputation as Oracle will be made, though – the whole thing relies on the implication that I always know what's about to happen._

"Oh, really? How?" the Taipan replied, and Riven fought back a shiver of fear and revulsion. _I hang out with international assassins on a daily basis, but this is different!_

Riven yawned, affecting boredom. Yawning on command wasn't really one of her normal skills, but she'd discovered once, completely by accident, that swallowing several times while holding her breath made her yawn. It was exactly what she needed at the moment.

"You see," Riven said carelessly, "You hacked JARVIS, for which I applaud you, but I hacked you. Every file you have. Even now, the Avengers are decimating your army, transporting your Tesseract shards where you will never be able to reach them, and destroying your communications network. And for overkill, I created a secondary system in our communicators, linked to our vital signs. If I or any of my friends dies, every dollar you own vanishes. Instantly. The pleasures of financial ruin await you, Taipan, so by all mean, kill me if you wish."

Riven swallowed her fear and stepped forward, holding out empty palms as she smiled brilliantly at the woman who had orchestrated SHIELD's destruction.

"Check," Riven said softly.

The Taipan was pissed.

Jacob was thinking seriously about just running away and never coming back, but he was too scared to take a single step. Never, _ever, _had he seen Nicole Ciarra so thoroughly thwarted. And it terrified him, because in his three years working for the Taipan, he had learned all too well what happened to those who displeased her.

Jacob considered himself lucky to have survived this long. He wanted out, of course he did, but you didn't walk away from the Taipan. The only way out was a shallow grave in a vacant lot.

Because Nicole Ciarra was poison.

The Taipan was absolutely still, breathing evenly and not blinking at all. Her green eyes were fixed on the smirking figure of Riven Lange. Nicole tilted her head to one side, and said softly, "I believe you are misinformed. Your 'Avengers' are soon to be dead. And whatever failsafe you think you have concocted, I can doubtless destroy in minutes."

Riven smiled, grey eyes seeming to glow in the dimly lit room. Jacob shivered. "Try it," Riven whispered. "And we'll find out."

Nicole smiled, a cold, inhuman expression. The irony was not lost on Jacob – the Taipan had dedicated herself to 'freeing' the world of 'inhumans', when she could easily have become one of SHIELD's best with her skills. The Taipan replied calmly, "I believe I will," and moved.

Jacob blinked, and missed it, so it took him a moment to realize what happened. Nicole had moved across the room, catching Riven by the shoulder and knocking her out with a single, precise blow to the back of the head. The Taipan dropped the dark-haired scientist to the floor with a look of disgust.

"Jacob," Nicole hissed, "Lock up this impudent Oracle somewhere. I have some work to do."

He nodded quickly, pressing a hand to his face to hold onto his glasses. Jacob winced a little as he grabbed Riven by the arm and awkwardly dragged her out of the ops room. He had absolutely no idea where he was going to put her, but Jacob was happy to seize any chance to leave the Taipan to herself when she was angry.

Jacob managed to drag Riven into the hallway, and stopped to catch his breath. He wasn't exactly the athletic type, and was utterly unprepared for dragging someone. Jacob studied the black-haired woman where she lay on the floor, her eyes closed. He wondered for the thousandth time if he was doing the right thing by working for the Taipan.

And for the thousandth time, Jacob sadly acknowledged that it was too late now to do anything about it.

With a sigh, Jacob glanced around the hallway for a place to stuff the unfortunate Riven Lange. He finally decided on a nearby closet, mostly because it meant he wouldn't have to move her very far. Jacob opened the closet and removed shelves of extra sheets, and for some unknown reason, an old and disgusting cup of what could have once passed for coffee. Jacob shuddered.

It took him a few minutes to move Riven into the closet, leaving her lying on her back. Jacob closed the closet door and wedged a shelf under the doorknob, effectively locking her in.

He returned to the operations room to find Nicole perched in one of the chairs, typing rapidly. "Ma'am? I locked up the scientist. She's in the closet."

Nicole hissed at him, not taking her eyes off the computer. "Shut up, Jacob. I don't _care _where you put Riven Lange. Now get out of my sight. I must break that brat's failsafe."

Jacob nodded quickly, backing out of the jammed doors. He was relieved to be dismissed. Of course, he had no idea what he was going to do alone in the creepy tower while the Taipan hacked into the Oracle's programs, but he was sure he could think of something. _Anything _was better than spending time with an angry Nicole Ciarra.

**Keeping track of all this isn't easy, and I apologize again for the posting error. I'm doing a lot of writing fast, so I should be updating a little quicker, since it's a weekend.**

**Thoughts?**

**K.S.**


	8. Chapter 8 - Day 4

**Hi guys. I'm getting highly frazzled trying to keep everything running smoothly.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven_****, and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Riven was getting tired of waking up trapped in dark places.

_ Didn't I already do this last week? Except it's not a quinjet this time – I think it's the linen closet. Weird._

_ Why am I in the linen closet?_

Riven scrambled upright, hands outstretched to keep her from hitting the walls. She tried the doorknob when she found it, but couldn't get it to turn. Riven then felt around until she found the hinges, but couldn't get the hinge pins out – trying ripped her fingernails and made them bleed.

She sat cross-legged in the dark, fuming. _How am I supposed to come up with a plan for my friends if I'm stuck in this stupid closet? And the Taipan is doing who-knows-what while I'm locked in here._

Riven smiled a little. _Actually, I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to find a program that doesn't exist._

_ I lied about the financial failsafe. There is no failsafe. She's tracking traces I put in on purpose, but the program itself was never there. I just made it look like I went to great trouble to hide it._

_ But what she doesn't know won't hurt me._

_ Until she figures it out._

Jacob had explored the entire basement of Stark Tower, excepting the bedrooms, because somehow he couldn't justify snooping through the Avengers' rooms. That was just too creepy.

It had been an hour, and the Taipan was still searching for Riven's failsafe. Jacob was bored, and boredom was a dangerous thing for a young man in his position, because he started thinking.

And he didn't like the thoughts that came to him.

Jacob was standing in the hallway, staring at the linen closet where he'd locked Riven Lange, the Oracle. According to the policies of the Freed, the Oracle was pure evil. A turncoat, a traitor, a human helping those who sought to conquer the Earth. And she'd scared him silly back in the ops room.

But the more Jacob thought about it, the more he didn't like what Nicole had told him about Riven Lange. Sure, the grey-eyed scientist scared him; but that was mostly because the lights were dim and she'd come out of nowhere. And Jacob thought it was clever of the Oracle to rig a cup of tea to pour on the Taipan, not to mention brave.

So here he was. Staring at the closet door, and listening to the sounds of the Taipan typing a few doors down. Jacob sighed and scratched the side of his head. He wasn't prepared to make a decision like this. He wasn't clever or special, just a normal office assistant.

Well, sort of.

But it had been a long time coming, and Jacob had made up his mind.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Once he'd done this, there was no going back. But if he was making the right choice, the Taipan wouldn't be surviving the day.

And if he was wrong. . .

Jacob refused to finish the thought, and pulled the shelf out from under the doorknob. He opened the door to reveal a blinking, surprised, and rather irritated Riven Lange.

Riven stared up at the young man who had come in with the Taipan. He had mousey brown hair and hazel eyes, hidden behind unflattering glasses. And he was holding a finger to his lips.

She stood, ducking out of the closet and glancing around. The hallway now contained piles of extra sheets, and an ancient, now-disgusting cup of coffee. Riven blinked at it, vaguely recalling snatching it out of Thor's hand while Captain America distracted the caffiene-high Asgardian. _So that's where it went. I remember deciding to never give him coffee again._

The young man whispered, "The Taipan is looking for your failsafe program. I've had enough. I'm leaving. Sort this out by yourselves."

Riven smiled at him, feeling sympathy, even though this was probably a trap that would get her killed. "I know the feeling," she whispered back, then added on impulse, "What's your name?"

He blinked. "Jacob."

Riven said softly, "Thank you, Jacob. Good luck. The door's that way," and pointed him down the hall.

Jacob gave her a confused sort of smile, and ran. Riven watched him go, silently wishing him safety. _Everyone should get a second chance._ She glanced toward the operations room. _But some people have already burned through that chance, and I'm not the forgiving type when people I care about are in danger._

Riven took a deep breath, feeling an idea growing in the back of her mind. It was going to be tricky, and it was risky, and she wasn't sure she could do it, and she didn't like it very much – but it would resolve the problem, and right now it was Riven against someone who could kill her without even trying.

Riven sighed, and started walking.

**We're making our way toward the final showdown, but that area is still under construction. I'm working on it. Right now, I'm off to go stand in the rain watching a soccer game.**

**Yes, I do consider that to be fun.**

**Questions? Comments? Reviews?**

**K.S.**


	9. Chapter 9 - Day 4

**Ok guys, I'm sorry this took so long, but it was arguing with me. I finally got it under control. A large thank you goes to Shadow Felis, for reminding me that real life comes first. You essentially gave me an excuse to take a few hours and just breathe, do something else, and get my thoughts in order. Because this took a lot of thinking. I hope you all like it.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Nicole Ciarra was royally pissed off.

An hour and a half had passed since she'd incapacitated the Oracle, and the Taipan still couldn't find the failsafe. She knew it was there – she kept encountering traces of an erased programming sequence, or deleted files that broke a chain of numbers.

It was driving Nicole crazy.

She hadn't given Jacob a second thought; he'd done as he was told, and there was nothing else to think about. Jacob was insignificant compared to the dilemma facing Nicole at the moment. It was nearly two in the morning, and she was tired, as well as soaked with tea. Nicole hated tea.

A monitor flickered on in the corner, and Nicole paused, turning to stare at the screen in surprise. She blinked green eyes at the face of Riven Lange, who was whispering urgently.

"JARVIS? Can you hear me? Good. I need to get eyes in the ops room, so I know what the Taipan is doing. I have to get out of here. But my trap spilled tea everywhere and the computers are going haywire. I can't get them to work."

Nicole watched in dawning realization as Riven moved away from the screen, revealing part of the night time New York City skyline behind her. And . . . the jet Nicole had used to fly to Stark Tower.

_She's on the roof. She's trying to escape._

Nicole smiled. _Perfect. I don't think this failsafe really exists – the brat is trying to trick me. In any case, it will be easy enough to make her tell me. And once I know for sure –_

The Taipan's angry green eyes went cold, and she stood, moving quickly and silently toward the stairs, one hand drawing the pistol she wore at her back.

Riven was trying not to hyperventilate.

_I know she's coming. I know it. JARVIS will tell me when she gets close. I know what I have to do._

It wasn't working.

Riven was so scared she wanted to crawl in a hole and die, and then cry for a while. Her hands were shaking as she pretended to type, giving the illusion of a desperate girl trying to hack back into a surveillance system she had once controlled.

In reality, she was a desperate girl baiting a trap that would most likely get her killed in a slow, highly unpleasant fashion.

Riven silently wished she could take ten minutes and talk to Hawkeye, but there just wasn't time - the Taipan would come for her any second now.

As if on cue, JARVIS said quietly, "Three floors down, Miss Lange."

Riven nodded, swallowing hard. "Thank you, JARVIS," she whispered, and thought it through one more time –

_Look up when she comes through the door, act surprised, back away, duck around the jet, out toward Iron Man's landing pad, and when she follows me, JARVIS will open the floor and drop her into the storage space. It's not exactly designed for containment, but it will do for a day or two._

_ Let's hope everything works the way it's supposed to._

The door opened, and Riven glanced up, wide-eyed, to see a very angry Nicole Ciarra looking back at her. Riven didn't have to fake the fear as she backed away, gasping, "You're supposed to be in the ops room!"

The Taipan laughed with a hissing sound that made Riven shiver. "Poor, pathetic little girl," Nicole said softly. "You're no Oracle. You're not even particularly clever. There is no failsafe program. And I'm going to kill you."

Riven felt her face go white, and silently thanked her body's natural reaction. She scrambled around the tail of the jet as the Taipan followed, slowly, taking her time.

Riven was not taking her time. She was all but running backwards, doing her best not to trip. Riven was close to the edge now, backing over Iron Man's landing pad, glancing over her shoulder at the drop.

The Taipan's hissing laugh preceded her around the tail of the jet, and Nicole's smile widened as she saw Riven cornered on the edge, and the Taipan slowly, carefully aimed the pistol in her hand. The blonde advanced gracefully, taking gliding steps across the metal deck.

Riven counted every step, her heart pounding so hard she could barely believe it wasn't audible. One more step – and one more –

And the deck didn't open. Nicole stood safely on a floor that was not sliding away, with her gun trained on Riven's forehead.

Riven's voice broke as she said in panic, "JARVIS? Hello?"  
The Taipan's face was cold as she said softly, "You're even less intelligent than I thought. I disabled JARVIS in the operations room before I came up here. It's just you and me . . . Oracle."

Riven made a sort of choking noise in her throat as her mind went blank and white with terror. Nicole laughed, and tossed the gun aside. "I don't need this," the blonde smirked.

The Taipan lunged –

Riven's knees gave out and she hit the metal deck, hard. And with a vague but awful instinct, she stuck out her foot –

And the Taipan tripped over Riven's outstretched leg and went over the edge.

Riven lay still for a long moment, gasping for air. She couldn't believe it, couldn't understand it. She was dead, surely, the Taipan was going to kill her . . . but no.

The Taipan had tripped over Riven and fallen. The Taipan was dead.

Riven put her head down, feeling the cold metal against her forehead, and sobbed.

She hadn't even screamed. Neither of them had.

It took Riven a while, but she scraped herself up off the deck and made her way inside, trembling. She remembered Nicole's face, cold and burning and hating and impersonal, all at once –

And then nothing.

Riven couldn't stop shaking. She sat on the floor of the elevator, all the way back down to the basement. She stumbled into the room she shared with Hawkeye, and opened the laptop she kept there.

Riven couldn't make herself go back to the operations room, not now. Maybe not ever. This would have to do instead.

She whispered in a voice that shook, "Command, Avengers plus Riven." She took a deep breath and said quietly, "Guys? I'm here."

Hawkeye answered her instantly. "Are you all right?"

Riven stared down at her shaking hands. _ I don't know. How could I know? How could I be all right? I just caused the death of a human being. I tripped her over the edge. Yes, she was trying to kill me, but that only makes it worse._

_ I might as well have killed her with my own hands._

"I think so. No physical injuries. Well – a knock on the head, maybe."

Natasha asked quietly, "What happened, Riven?"

"I – it's over. At least, it is here. She's dead. She fell."

Captain America said gently, "Who's dead, Riven? What happened?"

Riven couldn't stop shaking. She grabbed Hawkeye's pillow and wrapped her arms around it, breathing in his scent. "The Taipan," she whispered. "The Taipan's dead."

Natasha said fiercely, "Riven. Talk to me. Do you mean that Nicole Ciarra was there? Trying to kill you? Riven, the Taipan is on more wanted lists than I used to be. Are you sure you're all right?"

Riven closed her eyes. "I think so. I mean. . . I know it was the Taipan. She's . . . dead. She fell. I . . . I think I tripped her. She fell off the tower. She was leading the Freed. She was the one behind everything."

Hawkeye spoke again, voice low and serious. "Riven, listen to me. Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Are you scared?"

Riven's eyes filled with tears. "Yes," she whispered, and then, weakly, "I miss you."

**Wow, what a ride. And we aren't even done yet - not by a long shot. Stick with me people, and for the sake of my sanity, leave a review. They make me giggly and happy, which is a great writing mood.**

**K.S.**


	10. Chapter 10 - Day 4

**The thing about writing the difficult bits is that once I have them down the way I like them, I want to publish them all at once! Sorry, that's not happening, because some things still need work, but I'm giving you two chapters at once because I didn't update yesterday or the day before. I am not apologizing for that, except I think I already did in the last chapter. Whatever. I needed that time! So deal with it. Please.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven_****, and****_ The_****_Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

The Black Widow watched her partner shut down.

It wasn't obvious, but it was there. Hawkeye's gaze shifted a little, and Natasha knew he was thinking only of Riven.

Captain America was looking at the sealed doors – behind them waited the Freed. His blue eyes were far away, and he was thinking. "Riven," he said quietly, "The Taipan was the leader of the Freed, yes?"

"Yes." Riven's voice was barely above a whisper, and the Black Widow curled her hands into fists. She was worried about Riven. The first kill was always the worst, and Riven was completely unprepared for it.

The Captain said, "Then we might be able to get the Freed to surrender."

Thor looked at him sideways, and replied, "I do not think that warriors who believe so fervently in their cause will surrender."

Captain America wiped blood off gloves as he replied, "But that's the whole point. I don't think the Freed are really as obsessed as they seem. They're just people."

"Heavily armed people who'd really like to kill us," Iron Man objected.

The Captain glanced at Iron Man, and said simply, "But they're still people. And I don't think they'll throw their lives away without a leader. We might be able to get out of this without too much more fighting."

The Hulk made a growling noise, and the Black Widow added, "And if not, we can handle a few more soldiers."

Hawkeye finally pointed out the problem. "We still have to take care of Fury."

There was a pause as the Avengers looked at the one-time director of SHIELD. Fury was unconscious, which was probably a good thing, because he was bleeding from various small wounds, and had burns on his skin. He'd been tortured by the Freed.

"It's worth a try," Iron Man said at last, and they all moved.

Hawkeye dragged Fury behind a generator, and knocked an arrow. Captain America and Iron Man took up positions on opposite sides of the doors, with Thor off to one side. The Hulk slowly dragged the doors apart, and the Avengers found themselves facing a wall of automatic weapons in the hands of the Freed.

Liam Donovan was second in command of the Freed, and in the Taipan's absence, the acting leader. He was beginning to be seriously irritated with the Avengers. They were supposed to be mighty warriors, attempting to conquer the earth.

And they were hiding in the generator room.

Donovan's soldiers were growing restless. He hadn't told them that the generators had the capacity to incinerate all of them – that was just a bad leadership strategy.

But something was finally happening. The Avengers were opening the doors, and Donovan drew in a breath, preparing himself to receive their surrender. The Taipan would be pleased with him.

And then the one called Captain America called out, "Your leader is dead. Nicole Ciarra is no more. You have no reason to fight us. We don't want to kill you, or take over the world. We're trying to defend it."

Donovan's mouth dropped open. This was _not _how things were supposed to work. The Avengers were supposed to die, not kill the Taipan. And how had that happened, anyway?

Furious, he yelled back, "You have no proof of this!"

Captain America shrugged. "That's true. But where's your proof that we're trying to take over the planet?"

Donovan looked around him and saw his soldiers looking back with questions in their eyes. One or two had actually lowered their weapons. Frantic, Donovan yelled, "You invaded our base! You attacked us!"

The Captain tilted his head slightly. "If you remember," he replied coldly, "You attacked us first. You hunted us. We defended ourselves, and came here to retrieve one of our own."

Donovan could hear the soldiers talking quietly, and he didn't like what they were saying.

"He's got a point, you know –"

"- Always a bad idea to take hostages –"

"- Probably better to let them go –"

"I'd rather live than get fried for –"

"- took out the boss, I'm not gonna mess with them."

Donovan panicked.

_He _knew the truth; _he _knew the Avengers would take over Earth and subjugate humanity. And he wasn't going to let that happen, even if he had to destroy himself and all of the Freed's soldiers.

Donovan raised his gun and fired a stream of bullets into one of the three, Tesseract-powered generators.

Riven was listening to the Avengers on her communicator, and using a satellite-based infrared feed on her laptop to watch. She heard Captain America speak to the Freed. She saw the small red figures of the Freed's soldiers as they stirred uncertainly. She saw some of them lower their weapons.

Riven bit her lip, silently hoping that this might actually work, glancing at the small figure on her screen that represented Hawkeye, backed into a corner with Fury. And then the figure at the front of the Freed moved, and Riven's screen went white.

For a single moment of disbelief, Riven thought her computer had malfunctioned. But as red and orange began to creep in around the edges of the white, she realized in horror what had happened.

The acting leader of the Freed had shot one of the generators, triggering a triple explosion powerful enough to destroy everything within miles.

Ten minutes passed before Riven could bring herself to move. She just sat, staring at the screen as the colors slowly cooled. Finally, Riven set the laptop aside, leaving the screen open. Just in case.

She knew better. Riven had calculated the radius of an explosion powered by Tesseract shards.

Riven knew better than to hope.

So she didn't.

Riven lay on her back, blank grey eyes staring at the ceiling, and waited to come apart.

**Sigh. I'm so glad to be able to hit the magic button and put this online. It's taking a lot out of me, but the end is in sight. . . well, only if you can see as well as Hawkeye.**

**Which I can't, but authors get special privileges. Your special privilege as a reader is to leave me a review!**

**K.S.**


	11. Chapter 11 - Day 4

**Hi, everyone. I'm supposed to be editing an essay I wrote, so I'll make this quick. This chapter is a bit gory, but hey, I just blew up the southern half of California! What do you expect?**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven,_**** and ****_The Freed. _**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

Riven didn't come apart. She stayed exactly the same. Even breathing, barely blinking, mind blank.

Slowly, barely, a thought pieced itself together behind her staring eyes.

_I have to see for myself._

Riven let out a long, slow sigh. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to make it real.

They couldn't be dead. They just . . . couldn't.

She shuddered, and rolled onto her side, kicking the laptop off the bed. Riven stared blankly as the computer clattered onto the floor. She somehow couldn't bring herself to care as the screen went blank.

Riven rose, slowly. She was exhausted, but at least she'd finally stopped trembling. Sort of.

She wasn't walking terribly well, but she was moving, and that was progress. Riven could barely think through the fog in her brain, lifting her feet slowly and setting them down again, dragging herself through the corridors with her laptop under her arm.

Riven made her way up to the roof. She couldn't stay long, couldn't bring herself to look at the ledge where she'd caused Nicole Ciarra to fall.

Riven wrapped her fingers into fists, and entered the jet the Taipan had landed on the roof of Stark Tower. It was one of Riven's designs, one SHIELD hadn't used yet. It could fly without a pilot, completely automated. And unless Nicole had taken the time to methodically erase the flight records, Riven could send the jet right back to the Freed's base.

Or . . . what was left of it.

But she wasn't going to think about that.

Riven programmed the jet's flight computer to reverse its course, back to California, and strapped herself in. The jet was more advanced than anything else in the sky; she would be there in little over an hour.

She contemplated trying to sleep, but that made her wonder if she would have nightmares. And nightmares made Riven think of Hawk.

Riven decided not to sleep.

She closed her eyes and counted heartbeats, all the way to Los Angeles.

Riven eventually had to get up and redirect the jet so it would land a few miles out from where the Freed's base had been. She avoided looking at the ground until she absolutely had to.

But in the time before dawn when Riven took a deep breath and stepped out of the jet, she couldn't escape what she'd brought herself to see. And it took her breath away.

The ground was split open in a massive crater, stretching for miles. Riven stared in horror at the destruction, and her lips silently formed a name.

She had to know. Curiosity tugged at her firmly, irresistibly, but Riven wasn't ready yet. She started by returning to the jet and using the laptop she'd brought to run a quick internet search: explosion in Los Angeles.

It only took a few moments for Riven to discover that the generally accepted cause for the record-setting explosion was a massive earthquake that rocked the city and broke all kinds of gas mains. The authorities hadn't gotten around to exploring the crater yet, but it was only a matter of time. And then there would be chaos when people realized there was an underground fortress that no one had known about.

Riven closed misty grey eyes and thought about the time she'd spent in an air duct, crawling through the walls of the flying fortress she'd created, dodging pipes on her way to see –

Riven couldn't quite bring herself to think his name.

_So much for happy endings._

She couldn't keep the bitterness from building inside her, but anger kept its distance. Riven had nothing to be angry at. The Freed were gone. The Taipan was gone. Her friends were –

_No. Not until I see with my own eyes that there's no chance. They do the impossible every day. They are the impossible._

Riven blinked away the tears that threatened her, and stood. She collected a small black case from a storage compartment, picked up her laptop, made her way out of the jet, and walked slowly to the edge of the crater. It took her a while, because Riven had landed a safe distance away. But eventually, she was there, and trapped. She both dreaded what she would see – and she had to see.

Riven looked up at the stars, faint and hard to see from the light pollution. She drew in a quick breath, and let it out slowly, stretching the moment as much as she could.

_He wouldn't hesitate. He'd do what he had to do, no matter how much it hurt._

And it did hurt – it hurt a _lot. _The very thought made Riven gasp in air, feeling as though someone had punched her. Her foot moved forward without her telling it to, and Riven was suddenly staring down into the remains of the Freed's stronghold.

It was really quite simple, or this part was, at least. Riven was looking at what was probably an office once, judging by the charred remains of a desk and chair. But what an office – it was huge, and Riven thought she could recognize scraps of burnt teak flooring.

An awful thought occurred to her, and Riven clapped a hand over her mouth as her stomach rebelled.

_This was her office – the Taipan. It was hers._

She held onto her last meal, but only barely. The smell of burned stronghold was killing her, as was the choking finality of realizing that nothing could have survived that kind of explosion. Riven finally looked up at the horizon, where the darkness was beginning to relax its hold on the world with the approach of dawn.

_Get it over with, you idiot._

Riven set down the black case she'd carried from the jet, and opened it. She'd found the case while in the air, and was very glad to see it, because the contents made her task much safer. The case held a small explorer robot, one that Riven could control from her laptop. The robot wasn't one of her designs, but she was reasonably sure she could make it work.

She set up her computer programs, and Riven carried the small rover-bot to the edge of the crater. Wincing a little, Riven dropped the rover a good ten feet down into the remains of the Taipan's office. The clatter and crunch took out half the floor, resulting in the rover falling another several feet into the second story down.

Riven bit her lip and hoped the rover was as durable as it ought to have been. She sat down, folding her legs beneath her, and started typing commands into her computer.

Fortunately, the rover had survived the fall with only cosmetic damage. Riven guided the rover through the halls in search of a way to descend to floors below, and about choked when the rover found a door to what was once a hanger. She had to admire the way the Freed had put a hanger bay underground – the launch doors were built into a canyon that had been nearby. The canyon had collapsed in the explosion, but the doors were well camouflaged, and the area was private property.

Riven hated how clever the Taipan had been. Hated that Riven hadn't been able to see the Freed coming. Hated so much that she hadn't been able to stop this.

She forced herself to breathe, and backed the rover away from the massive hole where the hangar had been. Riven wasn't prepared to send the rover down quite that direct a route to the lower levels.

Riven found the stairs soon after, or rather, the burnt and broken wreckage of the stairs. She guided the rover down the stairs, and on occasion through the stairs when they gave out beneath the rover. It was a bit disconcerting for Riven's view of the Freed's base to suddenly crash through several layers of burnt construction, but the rover remained unharmed, which relieved her.

Finally, she managed to get the rover down the stairs and through the halls, until it was only one corner away from – the generator room. Riven focused on evening her breathing, unable to take her eyes off the sickening carnage, but wishing very much she could just be sick.

Still, that wasn't exactly a good idea.

Riven was beginning to get annoyed with herself. She'd had a large number of _oh it's so hard I just can't do it _moments already, and was tired of telling herself to deal with it.

So this time, she just typed in the command, and sent the rover around the corner. Riven wasn't prepared for what she saw. Not in the least.

Nothing.

Well, not _nothing,_ there was wreckage, and more disgusting burned and blackened human corpses, and Riven was holding her breath and trying to tell herself there was no point in hoping because any moment now she would see –

But she didn't. And she didn't. And she still didn't.

Finally, Riven sat back and looked up at the sky that was turning red with the dawn, and let herself marvel at the fact that was finally clear to her.

_The Avengers aren't here._

_ There's no sign of them. No stray gear, no bodies, no uniform scraps. They aren't here._

_ Which means . . . _

Riven laid down flat on her back, stretching her arms out on either side of her, a broad grin spreading over her face as the sun rose.

_They might still be alive._

**Because I wouldn't really kill off the Avengers, would I? Hmm. . . I don't think I'll answer that. Oh, and before anyone points it out, I really don't care that I snapped the laws of physics in half. I'm writing comic-book style sci-fi! The laws of physics are made to be broken!  
**

**Reviews are lovely. You should leave me one.**

**K.S.**


	12. Chapter 12 - Day 4

**This chapter took me a while to organize, because things are shifting so fast. I hope you all like it, because it might be a little while before I update again. Don't panic, I just need to work on what I've been writing, because it needs some heavy revision. Never fear, I don't ever abandon a character.**

**Ever.**

**Thanks again to Shadow Felis, for continued kind reviews.**

**Disclaimer: I'm way too tired to own anything but Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

The first thing Riven tried was her communicator. Predictably, there was no answer.

_If they could have called me, they would have by now. The explosion probably reset half the programming and they aren't linked up anymore._

_ But maybe not all of the programming . . . _

Riven had to write the program from scratch, because this wasn't the computer she normally used for such things, but it was worth it. She input the pass codes and the appropriate number sequences, and then the grey-eyed young woman who was one of the world's best and brightest crossed her fingers and closed her eyes.

There was a ping from the computer, and Riven's eyes flew open, brilliant and hopeful. She took in the contents of the screen in a glance, and shouted her triumph, punching the air.

_They're alive. And I know where they are. I can find them._

_ I'm coming, Hawk. Wait for me._

But of course, she couldn't just leave the jet sitting there. As soon as the relief efforts in the city were under control, there would be people investigating the massive crater that split the land open, and Riven was not about to hand over her advanced jet to whoever showed up first.

Fortunately, luck was on her side. A little research on her laptop showed her that essentially every electronic device that was in the area at the time of the explosion was knocked offline by the wave of Tesseract power. Which meant minimal chance of anything being caught on video.

It took a few minutes, but Riven made it happen, and she was reasonably certain that very few people had seen her. She couldn't keep a smile off her face as she walked away.

Riven had put the jet in the back lot of what used to be MGM Studios in Culver City. No one would think twice about seeing an advanced jet, or think it odd that no one knew why it was there, because the Tesseract explosion had almost certainly wiped out emails and electronic records, so it would be impossible to tell if someone had sent out a form requesting a futuristic jet.

She smiled to herself as she scrambled over the chain-link fence, and once she was out, Riven paused to open up her laptop. She double-checked her coordinates, and frowned.

_They haven't moved. That . . . is not good. Because they're in the middle of nowhere, and they undoubtedly need medical care._

_ Crap._

Riven hadn't picked a lock in years, but old habits died hard, and a hairpin found on the ground served her needs. Hotwiring the pickup truck was more difficult, but still only took her a few minutes. Riven silently apologized to whoever owned the truck, but there was no one around an hour after dawn, not right after there was an earthquake nearby; and she really needed transportation that was more practical than a jet.

Riven set the laptop in the passenger seat so the screen faced her, and took a moment to think of a route to the coordinates that flashed at her. Most of it would have to be off-road, simply making her way through the California desert.

She smiled a little, and started the truck.

Riven stopped the truck and stared out the windshield. There was no sign of the Avengers, but the coordinates were right. She glanced back at the computer screen to be sure, but she was definitely in the right place.

She sighed, and turned off the car. Riven stepped out into the hot desert morning, and looked around. The land was mostly flat around her, and there was a slight hill in front of the truck. She bit her lip, and started walking towards it.

_Maybe if there's a ravine on the other side –_

There was. And Riven froze, standing on top of the small rise, feeling the sun on her back as she stared down at the Avengers, and felt something inside her come back to life.

The Hulk was absent, with Bruce Banner in his place, wrapped in a blanket and sleeping. Iron Man was sitting on the ground with several pieces of his suit in front of him, looking considerably worse for wear. Captain America was lying on his back, apparently asleep; his uniform was ripped in several places and soaked with blood. Thor was sleeping as well, next to the doctor, and there was blood smeared across the demigod's armor. The Black Widow was sitting next to the Captain, apparently meditating. Fury was unconscious beside her, looking horrifically mauled.

And Hawkeye –

"_Riven!_"

She jumped, head whipping up, and saw him standing on the other side of the ravine, where he'd probably been keeping watch - his storm-colored eyes locked with hers. The Black Widow was on her feet in a single motion, though not as quickly as usual, but Iron Man didn't even bother to look up.

"Of course she's here," he muttered. "That figures. Anytime we get into trouble, Riven shows up. I'm getting used to it."

Riven barely heard him, because she was running and stumbling down into the ravine, focused only on the man who was moving toward her at an incredible speed –

They slammed into each other and held on tight, Riven wrapping her arms around Hawk's neck as he pulled her close. He buried his face in her unruly black hair and she closed her eyes to breathe in the scent of his skin.

"Riven . . ." he whispered, and she smiled.

"Are you ok?" Riven whispered back, and Hawkeye held her at arm's length to look at her.

"I'm all right. What about you?"

"I'm ok," she replied. She didn't believe him, because there was blood on his uniform, but at least it didn't look like it was his. Riven dimly registered that the others had woken up and were watching them with varying expressions. She didn't care.

Riven kissed Hawkeye, fiercely, and he returned the action as he ran his fingers through her hair. She found herself smiling as they broke apart for air, and abruptly, Hawkeye grabbed her hands and dropped to his knees.

"Marry me, Riven," he breathed.

She stared at Hawkeye in complete confusion. "Huh?"

Riven flushed pink as she realized what he had just said – and, oh God, what _she _had just said! _Shit!_

"I mean, yes! Yes, yes, yes!"

Hawkeye stood up and hugged her so hard she couldn't breathe, and she didn't even care. Riven just hung on, and listened as he whispered, "All that time, down there by the generators, I couldn't stop thinking about you – alone in New York with the Taipan – Riven, I -"

She gently put a finger against his lips to shush him. "I know," she whispered back. "I was doing the same thing." Riven hesitated for only an instant - after all, she was marrying him; she might as well say it. "I love you, Hawk."

Riven felt his smile as he answered, "I love you too."

Iron Man's voice made her jump. "Wow, that was just sickeningly sweet. Glad that went well."

**I am so exhausted. I have been up for about sixteen hours now, which included some serious volleyball and an intense rehearsal. I'm flat worn out. I'll try to work on this over the weekend, but I can't promise anything. I'm going to catch up on some sleep and take better care of my body, because I have an important volleyball tryout on Sunday.**

**Leave me a review, it's the polite thing to do. Not to mention that I practically depend on them to keep me happy. Because reviews like the one Shadow Felis left for me make me read them about twenty times and do an epic happy dance. So. You know what to do.  
**

**K.S.**


	13. Chapter 13 - Day 4

**Hi, everybody. I think we're finally there. It took me forever, but I'm much happier after sleeping for about twelve hours.**

**Hello, Indigo Scrawl. I was wondering where you were; thanks for the review.**

**Thank you, Shadow Felis. I'm still smiling. Between the laughing and the dancing, my family thinks I've gone nuts.**

**I might have forgotten to do this earlier, so thank you to Heather, Challen Evergreen, and everyone who reviewed anonymously.**

**Disclaimer: I own only Riven, ****_Riven, _****and ****_The Freed._**

**Enjoy!**

**K.S.**

The first thing they did was swap stories, because everyone wanted to know everything. Sitting in the ravine, Riven went first – with some editing on her part.

"I was in the ops room, right after you guys entered the generator room. I went upstairs to the kitchen for something to eat, and JARVIS told me that he'd been hacked, and there was someone in the tower." Riven hesitated for a moment, then continued in a rush, "It was the Taipan. I rigged the computers so a few traces of a program could be found, but I never actually made the program. I told her there was a failsafe that would wipe out her assets if any of us died. She . . . um . . . locked me in a closet, so she could try to find the program. Obviously, she couldn't, and I got myself out. Hinge pins." Riven held up her hands to show her ragged fingernails. "I tricked her onto the roof, and I was going to bait her over to Iron Man's landing pad. JARVIS was supposed to open the floor and we were going to hold the Taipan down there for a while, but she shut JARVIS down before she came upstairs."

Riven took a shaky breath, and Hawkeye gripped her hand. She kept her eyes on their fingers as she continued, "She had a gun, but threw it away. I fell right before she came at me, and I . . . I tripped her. She fell."

There was a moment of silence, and Hawkeye wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Thor said quietly, "I believe that you told us earlier there were intruders . . . multiple intruders. Did I hear you wrong?"

Riven paused for a moment, thinking of Jacob, with his worried eyes. _Everyone deserves a second chance. I wouldn't want that kind of legacy following me around. _"You must have," she replied. "The Taipan was alone."

Captain America frowned, blue eyes sharp, and she looked away. He knew. And Riven knew that he knew. She had said intruders, plural, and the Captain remembered. But he wasn't going to push it, and Riven was grateful.

Iron Man stretched, and stripped off another piece of his suit. "Yeah, well, nice job surviving."

Natasha rolled her eyes in Iron Man's direction, and added, "No, really, Riven. The Taipan is famous for being ruthless and precise. No one survives." The red-head's eyes showed that there was more to that story, and Riven made a mental note to ask her about it sometime.

But she had more pressing questions. "How did you guys get out? That explosion was . . . not nuclear, but definitely nasty."

Captain America sighed a little, and shrugged. "We got lucky."

Riven blinked grey eyes at him, and he smiled as he elaborated, "We all saw the guy in charge start to aim, and the Hulk reacted fastest."

Dr. Banner said, "I don't remember it very well, but I think . . . didn't he make a new exit? Through the roof?"

Iron Man laughed. "He sure did. Punched us a giant hole, and grabbed Cap. Thor took the scary lady," he nodded to Natasha, who raised an eyebrow at him, "And I grabbed Hawk and Fury. We went a long way straight up, and then got the hell out of there. Barely made it."

Riven looked at Hawkeye, and said quietly, "I'm glad you did. You shouldn't have been able to – but I'm sure glad you did."

The pickup truck Riven had stolen to find the Avengers was just barely big enough to hold them all. Riven drove, because she was in better shape than anyone else. Hawkeye sat next to her and Nat took the passenger seat. They strapped Fury into the back of the crew cab, and Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man rode in the bed of the truck.

The nearby hospitals were overflowing, but by dodging main roads, Riven managed to get them to Thousand Oaks, which wasn't quite as crowded. They made a stop along the way so she could buy the Avengers some clothes that weren't quite as obvious – the last thing they wanted right now was a bunch of press descending on them.

Riven was the only one who didn't require at least a little patching up, and Fury was sent straight to intensive care. Eventually, they managed to get the Avengers plus one in the same room.

Hawkeye had suffered only minor injuries, and Riven was curled up next to him on a couch. Natasha had one arm in a sling, and a sprained wrist; she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Thor was relatively undamaged, but had a large cut on one knee that required stitches; he was leaning against the wall. Captain America had taken the most damage – he had an arm in a sling and a sprained ankle, as well as having his shield arm dislocated and a few fingers broken. He was sitting in a chair across from the couch, looking exhausted. Dr. Banner was fine, aside from an extreme headache, and was sitting in another chair. Stark was nursing some serious bruises, a sprained ankle, and a twisted knee; he'd sprawled out across the second couch.

Riven was just glad that they were all alive.

But the question had to be asked – _now what?_

And she wasn't afraid to ask it. "What do we want to do about SHIELD? And before you answer – I think we can rebuild it. When the helicarrier went down, I extracted almost every byte of information in the system." Riven reached into her pocket and produced the same diamond-shaped computer chip she'd carried with her since the day the helicarrier was attacked. "So if you want, we can rebuild SHIELD."

Steve opened tired blue eyes, and said, "Well, the doctors told me Fury will be all right. He'll have a limp, but he'd be able to run SHIELD." He paused for a moment, and then added slowly, "SHIELD always did a lot of good that we didn't necessarily see. They weren't always great, but they helped a lot of people. And if we're going to protect people, we have to have some kind of organization – we can't do it all by ourselves. I think we should put SHIELD back together."

Thor spoke next, gazing at the tile floor. "I am sworn protector of the Earth, but I know well that we cannot be everywhere at once, nor see everything. I agree with the Captain – we will need aid, and I believe it is better if we choose our associates. We must rebuild SHIELD."

Dr. Banner said quietly, "I agree," and did not elaborate.

Natasha turned her red head to look at her partner, who gave her a small nod. "I'm in," the Black Widow said.

"As long as we don't have to do any weird team bonding stuff," Stark declared, "I'm good with it."

Riven looked at Hawkeye, who gave her a small smile. "Sounds good to me," he said.

She smiled, and said cheerfully, "Great. I have a lot of work to do then . . . but not right now. I got us all hotel rooms nearby, and the nurses know to call me if anything changes with Fury. So we can all get some rest, before Steve falls asleep in his chair."

Steve opened one sleepy blue eye. "What?" He blinked as the others laughed. "What did I miss?"

The Avengers plus one all had separate hotel rooms, but none of them wanted to be alone just yet. Stark ordered pizza, and they congregated in one room without any particular goal in mind – just being around other people was enough.

Thor was examining a piece of pizza with an uncertain expression. Steve was already asleep, lying on his side on the couch. Stark was staring blankly at the muted television – his distant expression let the others know who was on his mind. Dr. Banner was sitting in a chair, holding an icepack to the back of his head. Natasha hadn't touched the pizza, but her posture was relaxed as she sat curled up next to Steve.

Hawkeye and Riven were nested together on the other couch, with her head on his shoulder. Riven yawned sleepily, and glanced at the clock. She blinked, and then looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.

"Oh," Riven said in surprise. "I almost forgot. It's my birthday."

Hawkeye turned his head to look at her, and she smiled a little. "I'm 24. Wow."

Dr. Banner glanced across the room at her, and said, "Happy birthday, Riven."

Natasha added, "Yeah. Happy birthday."

On the other side of the couch, Thor abandoned his scrutiny of the pizza, and said, "My compliments on surviving another year, Riven." That made her blink, but Riven considered it to be a fairly polite Asgardian way of saying happy birthday.

Stark muttered something vague that might have included the word _Pepper, _and stood in search of the phone. Steve didn't wake, but moved slightly in his sleep, his head resting on Natasha's lap.

Hawkeye just kissed Riven's forehead. She smiled, and snuggled into his arm.

Riven was curled up in her hotel room bed with Hawk. She should have been sleeping – they both should have – but something was bothering him, and Riven wasn't going to sleep until she knew what it was.

So she waited. And while it felt like forever, it was really only a few minutes before Hawk said quietly, "Riven?"

"Hmmm?" She lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him.

Hawk's gaze was soft, but a little worried. "If we put SHIELD back together – I'll be on missions a lot. I don't want to leave you alone."

Riven smiled at him. "Don't be ridiculous. Even if we didn't rebuild SHIELD, we wouldn't exactly be together every second. And while you're gone . . ." She tilted her head forward and kissed him. "I will wait for you. It's not like I won't have anything to do, after all."

Hawk smiled at her, and said, "Wait a moment." He rolled over and picked something up from the table beside the bed, then turned back to face her.

Riven's eyes went wide as Hawk gently slipped a ring onto her finger. It was a delicate silver band, with a Celtic knot in place of a gem.

She loved it.

"Oh, Hawk," she whispered, and kissed him.

He smiled. "I'm glad you like it. I love you, Riven."

"I love you too, Hawk."

**So that's the end. . . or is it?**

**K.S.**


	14. Epilogue

**I had some ends to wrap up, and I just couldn't leave one of my characters wandering around without any proper ending, now could I?**

Jacob Brown was walking down a sidewalk in New York City, smiling. He'd just gotten a job with a publishing company, and he'd rented an apartment yesterday. He had a new life, one completely separate from the chaos in Los Angeles.

He was free, and not Freed. To Jacob, that made all the difference.

He didn't even realize where he was until he stepped on the book. Jacob looked down in surprise, and picked up a paperback mystery novel.

"Crooked House," he mused. "Might be interesting." Jacob looked up, and saw with surprise that he was standing almost directly underneath Stark Tower.

He gazed at the Tower for a few moments, thinking. Jacob blinked in surprise as a black jet came into view between the skyscrapers, and slowly landed on the top of Stark Tower.

Jacob smiled, tucked the book into his pocket, and walked away.

The nurse in the New York hospital said patiently, "I'm afraid you have amnesia, my dear. You survived quite the fall. It may take you a very long time to remember anything. I don't suppose you do remember your name?"

The blonde woman shook her head slowly, green eyes confused. "No. I don't remember anything."

The nurse gave her patient a small smile, and said gently, "That's all right. Your memories might return soon, or they could take a little longer, and come gradually. Try not to focus on it too hard." The nurse made a note on her clipboard and left.

The woman in the hospital bed stared out the window at the sunshine. She couldn't remember her name, or who she was, or anything, except . . .

Except that when she closed her eyes, she saw a grey gaze looking back at her.

**I would like to offer a Hulk-sized THANK YOU and matching hug to my friend, Avengers-Captain America, who kept me sane during the writing process. Cap, you put up with my babbling, my nagging, and my frazzled expressions at rehearsal. You read it, liked it, reviewed it, and called me on it when I screwed up. You are my lifeline to the real world. **

**Thank you.**

**Well, I'm done with Riven's story now. I'll probably write more Avengers fanfiction, but I'm not planning on returning to Riven any time soon. Don't get me wrong, I love her very much, and writing this was a blast, but I'm really glad to be done with it. There's nothing quite like the feel of finishing a story.**

**I do have some short stories hopping up and down in the back of my mind, yelling ****_Pick me!_**** So a few of them might make it on here. I will admit that I borrowed shamelessly from the DC Universe with Riven's role as Oracle (Batgirl fans will know what I mean), but I think it turned out well.**

**I want to thank Shadow Felis again, because you rock. You really do. I love your reviews so much, and your advice helped me finish this story.**

**One more time, everyone - leave me review, please.**

**K.S.**


End file.
